


Crosswords and Crossroads

by SylvesterDeservesToBePaid



Category: business business
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:48:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvesterDeservesToBePaid/pseuds/SylvesterDeservesToBePaid
Summary: Tim is a simple, boring man, about as average as they come. He married young, had two beautiful children, and has been steadfast in the same career since college. He's always been careful to scrimp pennies where he can, and mind his own business business, but now he's old and alone, and what was it all for? Tim reflects on his life.Now with one (1) skimmed over proofreading!
Relationships: Pharmacist Tim/Maria
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4
Collections: business business cinematic universe





	Crosswords and Crossroads

He wasn't sure where it went wrong, after all, he had done everything by the book.

His hands traced over the familiar crossword puzzle he had kept since his wife Maria had passed. Had things gone wrong after she had died?

Tim briefly recalled his life with Maria. They had met in college, the first day of the first semester, and although Tim had never really considered himself a romantic, he knew he was smitten upon his very first conversation with her.

Back then, women weren't really the kind of thing you would see in colleges, and so Maria had really stood out (Although he was sure she would've stood out no matter where they met). He had thought it back when they had first met, and now, clenching his crossword puzzle, he still knew that Maria was the most special thing he had ever known.

It was, of course, a natural conclusion to assume that things had gone wrong when his dear Maria had died, but Tim knew it wasn't true. As much as he wanted to easily and simply explain away his discontentment in life to the death of his wife, he knew it was more than just that. Things had not been right before Maria had died. Money was tight, it had always been tight, but now it hung like a noose around his neck.

Despite having worked as a pharmacist at the same company for nearly three decades, his wage was not enough to cover expenses. In his earlier years, he had saved religiously, but those savings were gone now, college for the kids. What little he did have went to keeping the illusion that everything was okay for Maria. Above all, he did not want her to know how poorly they were actually doing. 

Looking back, Tim was ashamed at the lengths he went to. He tried to stretch out the soups with cornstarch and water, wore shoes till the soles broke (and then resoled them from an old tire), even pawned his meager collection of fountain pens (how he had loved to unintelligibly scrawl on prescriptions). When his subscription to the morning newspaper ran out, he kept the crossword on the last one unsolved. Every morning, he would take out this newspaper and pretend it was a new one, never actually writing anything on it, just trying to keep Maria from noticing how bad their financial situation had really gotten.

Still, not matter how much he scrimped and saved, the noose tightened around his neck year after year. Eventually, the illusion broke and in tears Maria told him she regretted dropping out of college to support him while he finished his degree. 

He could still remember the day she had said that. It was snowy outside, a blindingly white snow, the air in the house had been tense and frigid. The part that had really stuck with him was the feeling of her hands as he tried to console her, deathly cold.

Their remaining few years together were bittersweet. She would always be the Maria that he had loved, and he would always be the Tim that she had loved, but she would never forget. She would never forget that she was not the Maria she wanted to be, the Maria with a career, the Maria who graduated college, a Maria who had never met him, never married him. Just before she died, Maria confided that she had known about the crossword, known all along of the situation they had been in, and she asked him why he had never told her. He didn't have an answer. 

When he returned from the hospital, he pulled out the crossword and the one fountain pen he had been to attached to sell (she had given it to him on their twentieth anniversary). He sat there, crying, determined to finally fill out the crossword for once and for all.

He never did. At first, he blamed it on his teary eyes. How could he fill out the crossword when he was crying? 

The second day was no better, nor the third, fourth, fifth or twentieth.

It became an obsession of sorts, he'd stare at it, pen in hand, willing himself to just fill in at least a single word, but he'd always freeze just before his pen touched the paper. He started taking it to work, forcing himself to just look at it, as if he could just concentrate hard enough and he'd be back in the kitchen, filling out his daily morning crossword while his wife hummed contentedly as she brewed their morning coffee. 

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, months turned into a numb blur.

At some point, his vision began to fade, and yet when work was idle, he still caught himself staring at the crossword he could no longer read.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, all he knew was that he was an old man, too old to redo his life. His kids never got in touch after Maria died, they had both gotten jobs out of state and never so much as sent a postcard, and Tim wasn't really interested in making new friends. He didn't feel lonely so much as he did empty, hollow.

That was much the way he felt when a young lad came into the pharmacy and asked for drugs. Tim was old enough that he had seen and heard nearly everything, and so it didn't phase him much. What did phase him was the young lads offer, he'd fill out the crossword if Tim would slip him some drugs. 

The offer... the offer scared him. It wasn't that Tim was afraid of losing his job, no, he had worked there long enough to know they hardly gave a shit. Tim was afraid of giving up the crossword, as if by doing so, he would be getting rid of the last moments of peaceful happiness he had with Maria, even if they were fake. But then Tim remembered. Tim remembered how stressful that time had been, and how Maria had questioned him on why he never told her, and Tim remembered staring at the crossword until his vision faded badly enough that he couldn't read. All of a sudden, Tim understood.

He understood that if he did not give this young man the crossword now, he would never be rid of it. The young lad might not return it, but honestly, as scary as the thought was, he kind of wanted it to happen. He wanted the young man to take the crossword and never return.

The young man did return the crossword, and at first, Tim wasn't sure how he felt about that. He scanned it over to see if the man had put in the right answers (He had memorized every answer years ago), but realized it was futile now that he was half blind, and that it didn't really matter. The crossword was filled, and for the first time in years, Tim felt something. He wasn't sure what it was, but it felt as if he had been forced back into existence instead of waiting for his time to come. One day, if there was an afterlife, he would rejoin Maria, but for now, he had to move on with life. If she could see him now, she would be screaming at him to just do something with all that time she never got, just do something with all that freedom she never had. He pocketed the crossword, it was time to fill in the blank spaces in life.


End file.
